North Missouri Cross State Highway

[Route66Fan]

Another thing that I have found out is that, due to the Grand River, between Dewitt, MO & Brunswick, MO, flooding & changing course over the years, parts of the old highway & some other county roads in the area have been wiped out. Also a 1914 Carroll Co, MO plat map I found on Historic Map Works seems to not show some of the roads mentioned in the 1918 Automobile Blue Book.

Probably another reason the route markers used wood poles at the time, due to the constant changing of the routes. Another problem was the removing of roads that essentially crossed farmers private property.  What started as a way to move their horses and wagons, the path ended up becoming shortcuts for cars when they became more prevalent. So farmers put up gates to shut off the the road and made the route inaccessible.  I remember reading an old paper (early 1900's) reminding people that driving their new cars across private farmland was illegal. We might think that funny today, but people saw a path and would drive down it oblivious.

I think that was also mentioned in the 1918, or another, Official Automobile Blue Book.

I've got about 99% of the routing of the 1918 routing of the North Missouri Cross State Highway mapped out here. I am still working on revising it, but I think it's pretty close to the route described in volume 5 of the 1918 Official Automobile Blue Book.

That is a great map. I was tracing your route south and west of Brunswick. Seems the route turned north then west prior to the Missouri unless you think the river changed it course due to a flood after 1918.

According to some Google searches I did, there was some flooding that happened on the Missouri River in 1923-24, that may have affected the route, also some of the floods that have happened since then may have wiped out some of the roads as well.